CIHR or NSERC??? Help please!

[sparkles3288]

Originally Posted by bloh

Damn you for making me go look this stuff up

I got it from my official score breakdown when I won the award myself several years ago. They looked at 3 things: academic/research experience, personality and research environment. Without giving away too much they were worth roughly 2:2:1.

Publications went under "academic/research experience" which looked at GPA and publications (of which I had none). I had a high mark - conclusion is therefore very simple.

What reviewers comment in the box at the end is not necessarily representative of how your score is calculated. Your 3 publications may have just given you the edge to get you over the barrier or that's just what they wished to comment on. One of my comments were with regards to an undergrad supervisor and her training environment which is obviously irrelevant at this point. Ironically, that reviewer still marked me high on "research environment" which just goes to show that their comments aren't reflective of how your score is determined. It's just a comment box.

I can't comment on the scoring criteria for a PhD award as I never went through it.

You know, these awards are rather easy to get but you do need to have the support of your supervisor. Remember that grades aren't super inflated for graduate students. The vast majority of graduate students aren't crazy premed students that broke their back for a high GPA. A 3.6-3.7 is very competitive here. You will make or break your application when you try to outline your personality, research goals and the training environment of your supervisor. It's imperative that your supervisor writes an excellent letter of support detailing why your project is great, why you are an excellent person for it and why you have all the tools at your disposal to go at it.

Interesting. I was always told that publications were the "make it or break it" sort of decision in CIHR. I only applied once and I had publications, so I didn't know any other way. However, I applied to AHFMR (provincial funding) without publications and didn't get it my first time. Second time I applied with pubs and got it. I sort of thought it would be the same across the board.

Thanks for the info!

[leap87]

I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, that CIHR is a bit different than NSERC. From what I gathered, you need a pretty strong GPA to get NSERC. For CIHR, not so much. While NSERC might still look at the whole package, I believe they put much more emphasis on your undergrad GPA. If you have a great research proposal/training environment and a project which is interesting with a problem that should be addressed, you're more likely to get CIHR. They also look at your and your supervisor's publications/conference presentations etc. So having publications will definitively help you but being creative in your application with also give you a boost.

I received CIHR as an undergrad - no pubs, but good training environment and an interesting project. I haven't yet applied for Master's but I plan on writing the application the same way. You've got to engage them in some way and convince them that your project is important as well as outline why this would be a benefit in the health care field. That's at least what I gathered.

[NewfieMike]

Originally Posted by leap87

I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, that CIHR is a bit different than NSERC. From what I gathered, you need a pretty strong GPA to get NSERC. For CIHR, not so much. While NSERC might still look at the whole package, I believe they put much more emphasis on your undergrad GPA. If you have a great research proposal/training environment and a project which is interesting with a problem that should be addressed, you're more likely to get CIHR. They also look at your and your supervisor's publications/conference presentations etc. So having publications will definitively help you but being creative in your application with also give you a boost.

I received CIHR as an undergrad - no pubs, but good training environment and an interesting project. I haven't yet applied for Master's but I plan on writing the application the same way. You've got to engage them in some way and convince them that your project is important as well as outline why this would be a benefit in the health care field. That's at least what I gathered.

yeah I think you're pretty spot on with the last part. I wouldn't be so sure that CIHR has less emphasis on GPA. Since there are so few awards, there are going to be people who have both a great GPA as well as a great research environment/proposed project. Undergrad NSERC/CIHR is a lot different.

I'm not bothering with either this year. 1 year ONLY awards with no renewal are pretty annoying.